The shifting tides of e-commerce: Navigating the rapidly evolving e-commerce technologies

Over the past several years, the e-commerce landscape has witnessed significant shifts and trends that have transformed the way people shop and engage with businesses through mobile devices. Adjust data reflects this fundamental migration of consumer spend to mobile. Comparing April 2020 to April 2023, for example, we see that monthly revenue from in-app purchases (IAPs) globally has increased by 184%. This rise is particularly pronounced among Android apps, which have seen a 248% increase in this time compared to iOS’ 132% lift.

The exponential growth of mobile shopping apps has led to increasingly user-friendly, feature-rich, and personalized user journeys, which offer seamless browsing, secure transactions, and convenient payment options. We’ve seen a number of trends and technologies surface over this time.

2011/2014: Mobile wallets

In 2011, Android users were bestowed with the revolutionary mobile wallet (Google Pay) and in 2014, Apple followed suit with Apple Pay. Now commonplace, mobile wallets not only reduce, and in some cases eliminate, the need for physical wallets and cash, but also open up new opportunities for apps to offer frictionless payment experiences to their customers.

Rather than having to input card information into each individual app, apps offering mobile wallet payment options allow users to pay in seconds with just face ID or a fingerprint.

2016: Instagram and Facebook shopping

In 2016, Facebook launched its Marketplace feature, where users could buy and sell items locally. In the same year, Instagram began testing its Shop feature, which displayed a feed of posts which included one or more tagged products. In 2018, Shop was added to the Explore tab, and Shopping Stickers were added as a rich media option on Instagram stores. Shop was finally introduced to its place on the home page in 2020.

Although more prominent on Instagram, an inherently visual platform, Shops was also made available on Facebook. Some businesses enabled users to check out directly from within the social media app–the ultimate frictionless customer journey; others used deep links to bring users to the correct product page.

The Shop feature has since been nearly completely phased out, leaving only shoppable product tags in images which can appear in search results, as well as the ability to add a shop front link on business profile pages.

In the fast-paced world of m-commerce, trends are constantly emerging. What can mobile marketers expect to see next?

1. Livestream shopping to continue taking over social commerce

Livestream shopping has gained immense popularity, particularly in the Asian market, and is making its way to the global stage. This trend combines the power of social media, video streaming, and e-commerce, allowing consumers to watch live product demonstrations, interact with hosts, and make purchases in real-time.

Livestream shopping provides a dynamic and engaging shopping experience, enabling brands to showcase their products, answer questions, and build a sense of urgency to drive sales. With the rise of influencer marketing and the increasing demand for authentic and interactive experiences, livestream is sure to revolutionize the way consumers shop through mobile devices.

2. Artificial intelligence (AI) to be leveraged by marketers

Meta already hosts its ‘Advantage+ app campaigns’, which automatically delivers your app’s ad to the most relevant audience, depending on a particular event you have set or in order to achieve the best ROI. Now, Meta is taking its AI offering to the next step, and recently announced the launch of its AI Sandbox for advertisers.

This new set of AI-powered tools includes a text-generator, which produces multiple versions of copy for marketers to test, background image generation, and image outcropping for resizing across Meta’s advertising channel formats.